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Educational Attainment by Pennsylvania County -- 2016

Keith Greiner, Ed.D.

August 9, 2020

Educational attainment is important to society because people with post high school degrees enjoy an improved life, improved health, improved personal enjoyment, and improved income. They become better, more visionary, leaders and that make valuable contributions to society.

The College Board’s annual publication, Education Pays (https://trends.collegeboard.org/sites/default/files/education-pays-2016-full-report.pdf) for 2016 included three central categories of benefits of higher education. Following are three summary statements from the report.

• “Median earnings increase with level of education, [although] there is considerable variation in earnings at each level of educational attainment.”
• “College education increases the chance that adults will move up the socioeconomic ladder and reduces the chance that adults will rely on public assistance.”
• “Individuals with higher levels of education earn more, pay more taxes, and are more likely than others to be employed.”

Unfortunately, the Republican U. S. Congress and Republican-controlled state legislatures continue to reduce support for higher education.

According to the College Board annual publication Trends in College Pricing 2017, Pennsylvania ranks last in the 10-year change in higher education funding per Full-Time Equivalent (FTE) student. The only state with a worse record is Illinois, for which there is missing data. Some say that the Republican state legislatures are conducting a "war on higher education". The assessment is seemingly true when one considers that only seven states indicate a positive change in FTE funding based on the Trends publication. Failure to fund higher education affects educational attainment and economic development.

This essay shows the status of post-high-school educational attainment, by county, for Pennsylvania for 2016 and the percentage point changes between 2012 and 2016.

Educational Attainment

About 30.8% of Pennsylvanians, aged 25 and over, have a Bachelor’s degree or greater. That is close to, but slightly less than, the U. S. percentage of 31.3% in 2016. The percentage for Pennsylvania continues the general pattern that, in this country with outstanding educational opportunities, people with four-year degrees continue to be a minority.

As with most averages, the percentages for Pennsylvania tell only part of the story. In Pennsylvania, there are 67 counties. Within that group the percentage ranges from 50.23% in Chester County to only 8.30% for Forest County. The map shown below summarizes the state and gives an overview of the distribution. Values in the key are proportions. Multiply by 100 to see them as percentages.

Break points in the map are based on the distribution of values shown in the graph. Break points are based on the rate of change of the distribution line or a proportionate spacing of points that are in a continuous, consistent trend. The left-most break point is at a location where the steep decline on the left begins a more gradual decline. The steep decline on the right would be a break point if there were more counties to the right.

Following is the distribution of the proportions in rank order from highest to lowest. Remember that percentages are proportions * 100.

Below is a table of the percentages in rank order.

Percentage Point Change 2012 to 2016

The static level of educational attainment is helpful, and it is even more helpful to consider how attainment has changed over a period of time. The table shown below presents the percentage point growth in educational attainment between ACS reports for 2012 and 2016. Here, we see that Allegheny county is the highest with a 3.97 percentage point change, while Forest county is at the bottom with a decline of 0.88. That is unfortunate, as Forest County is also at the bottom of the ranked list of 2016 values of educational attainment. Forest is one of the least populated counties in Pennsylvania, so a small change in the number of educated individuals can easily result in a decline in the overall percentage.

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